Originally posted here (Spanish) in 2018.

Throughout my years as an advertiser, I’ve come to understand the business in all its forms: FEEs, commissions, efficiency bonuses (rarely seen nowadays), and even more, I fail to comprehend why the most crucial part of our work is treated as an overhead or simply given away.

When I grasped media commissions, I understood why creativity wasn’t charged separately or how a FEE covered this cost for the agency. The whole structure was designed to work in a way that achieved the desired profit while keeping costs at bay. Always in the black or at least, that was the ideal.

Now, what about planning?

While many agencies include it in the costs of a FEE or have it as a separately paid service, I don’t understand why it’s not considered the most important value of a modern agency in a world where investment is decreasing, creativity is abundant, and media is delivered directly to advertisers’ offices (or advertisers visit them to save on commissions).

Planners: The Uncool Advertisers

The planning department is the one that sets the playing field, the one that paves the right path for a brand to enter the arena it belongs to, where it can have a robust plan to achieve business objectives. Moreover, it provides the direction for creativity to deliver the message at the right time and place.

Those in planning, or those of us who enjoy this field, tend to be analytical, intuitive, and our creativity lies in the strategic aspect—looking for information that provides deeper insights into people, how to reach them. We feel we can tell stories or provide the framework for creativity to score the goal. Why not say it? We are the #BusinessDriven on both sides: agency and client.

The Commandments.

Currently, I have an intern who, though just starting out in design, is interested in strategy and wants to get involved. So, for her and for you, the reader, I share the 5 commandments of every planner:

1. We’re creative. We work for creativity.
   Our work revolves around seeking, finding, and shaping insights so that creativity has a purpose. We provide a guide to the department that ensures the message isn’t just the usual retail stuff. Our creativity lies in how we can move people in ways no one has before.
2. Good ideas explain themselves; bad ones need lots of PowerPoint (or Keynote in the best cases).
   A diagram. A diagram can explain a strategic plan because that’s what it is: a plan. We don’t need a lot of color, many slides with phrases to tell a story. The more simple and practical our work appears, the better we’ve done it.
3. Our cornerstone is research.
   As a child, I briefly wanted to be a journalist thanks to Tintin and Snowy. It wasn’t about writing for newspapers; it was because I liked investigating, I was curious. A planner must pay attention to read, search, and find. To see different paths within the same ones they see every day. Part of our daily routine should involve diverse reading. Something that teaches us, makes us smile with the excitement of learning: a new word, a new concept, an invention.
4. We’re team players. We work in tandem: with each other and the teams around us.
   It’s simple; we can’t do it alone, nor do we want to. We know we need more people to achieve an objective. Now that the World Cup has ended, we can see a clear example: Messi couldn’t do it alone. The world champion worked as a team, and that team had a whole country and numerous foreign fans (myself included) supporting them.
5. What we do must serve a purpose.
   Often it’s not visible. Many times, we’re just that department that’s not considered cool or the one whose purpose isn’t understood. Don Norman Chacón, VP of Strategic Planning at Garnier BBDO, gave me the words that shaped my path in planning: Creativity is what the consumer sees; strategy shouldn’t be visible. If a consumer understands the strategy, your work is poorly done.

What should be clear in “planning” at this moment?

Data must be the core of our business. This is necessary for creation and measurement; otherwise, we’re not doing our job. While data is more readily available today, the time to understand it becomes scarce.

Communications Planning. We work to place our message in the best location, ensuring it aligns with the brand’s identity and the channel it will be placed in. We must ensure if an ad is better suited for TV, radio, or Facebook, providing guidance to the creative team on how to adapt that message to one or more of those channels.

Immediacy. There’s no longer a three-month window for research. We don’t have a week to validate a post. Our work must be so clear that it can jump through time if necessary. We must stay connected to the news and make a news item a key point for a campaign, action, or social media post that steals the show.

Not just advertising; business innovation consultancy. The same goes for both sides. Planners must be alert and help our agency and client to see beyond and help them search for new business opportunities. Recommending a powdered milk brand to create toys or a yogurt brand to produce bags.

Storytelling. It’s clear: we engage on social media because we want entertainment. If a brand can’t tell a story, its competition can, and that’s where we lose the attention of someone who might have wanted to learn about us and not just our product. Let’s study how stories are told, but most importantly, let’s study the kind of stories people want today.